


Light The Way

by TheLostMaximoff



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-27
Updated: 2016-12-27
Packaged: 2018-09-12 16:04:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9079720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLostMaximoff/pseuds/TheLostMaximoff
Summary: When Caitlin finds herself alone in the dark, there's one person she always turns to





	

Caitlin Snow trudged up the stairs and fished her keys out of her coat pocket. She opened the door to her apartment and flicked the switch for the lights. Nothing happened and it took her a couple seconds to realize it. She groped for the switch and flicked it up and down a few more times. Her apartment remained as dark as it had been when she arrived.

“Crap,” she muttered to herself as she pulled out her phone.

A quick call to Central Utilities confirmed what Caitlin already suspected. Weather Wizard had struck again earlier in the night and it seemed that her apartment complex, and the whole neighborhood, had been a hapless victim of his attack on the city. At the time, Caitlin thought that Mardon was at least being considerate enough to wait until after Christmas, unlike last year. All things considered, she would have preferred the previous year’s homecoming to a warm and brightly lit apartment. She decided she would have to call someone else to come to her rescue.

“Hey, Cisco,” said Caitlin after he answered the phone. “The power’s out at my place and I really don’t want to stay here while waiting for it to come back on. Any chance I could crash at your place for the night?”

“I would normally be down for that but space is kind of a luxury here,” answered Cisco. “Barry’s still sleeping here until he gets moved into the new place. Plus there’s also HR here.”

“Could you come keep me company then?” Caitlin watched the rain falling from outside her window. “I have a whole carton of ice cream in the freezer that I can offer as bribery. Someone has to help me eat it before it melts.”

“Curse you, Snow,” said Cisco with mock indignation. “You would know my only weakness.”

“It’s not your only weakness. The other one is coffee, which sadly I don’t have to offer you.”

“Fine, I’ll come hang out and eat your ice cream. I swear the struggle is too real over here. Between Barry eating most of my food and HR drinking all my coffee, I think I might be dying.”

“Ice cream fixes everything.”

“For real. I’ll be over in a few minutes then.”

Caitlin checked the freezer after Cisco hung up the phone. The power must have been out for longer than she thought because the freezer was barely cold. She hesitated for a moment, mulling over what to do. She took off her power inhibitors and put the ice cream back in the freezer. She gave the whole inside of it a good blast of cold, only stopping after seeing a thin layer of ice coating the inside. Satisfied that it would stay relatively cold, she closed the door. She felt nervous about using her powers but she had done so at the Christmas party without any incident. What was the harm in using her powers sporadically?

Caitlin studied her power inhibitors that were lying on the kitchen counter. She hated wearing them. They were clunky and chaffed her wrists. She needed them though. Ever since the first time she lost control, she had been wearing them nonstop. She couldn’t risk hurting anyone again but she was better now though. Maybe she could leave them off for just a little while. She didn’t even know what their power source was. Maybe if she left them off, it would conserve their energy or something.

“I’ll be fine,” she told herself as she put the power inhibitors into a kitchen drawer and closed it. “I’ll be okay.”

XXXXX

“I totally forgot you lived in this neighborhood,” said Cisco after Caitlin let him in. “Mardon must’ve gotten too close to here with the lightning or something.”

“That was my assumption too,” said Caitlin as she finished lighting another candle. “Central Utilities said they were working on it but it might be a little while.”

“Um, how are you not cold?” asked Cisco, keeping his jacket on. “I mean you don’t have any heating and it’s kinda chilly in here right now.”

“These pajamas are really warm and comfy,” said Caitlin, which was true enough. “It was kind of a pain changing clothes in the dark though. Anyways, I have your reward for braving the cold and the rain.”

Cisco smiled as Caitlin handed him a full bowl of ice cream with a spoon already in it. He sat on her couch while she took a seat with him and put the carton on the coffee table. She felt the cold stay in her hand even as she let go of the carton, but she pushed that thought away and dug into her own bowl.

“The best of rewards,” decided Cisco after a couple bites. “Your power must have gone out really recently because this is still pretty cold.”

“Must have,” agreed Caitlin, her free hand darting to her other wrist in a motion that had become a nervous habit recently. “Is Barry doing okay? I know he got a little banged up when he was fighting Mardon.”

“Yeah, he just needs to sleep it off,” dismissed Cisco. “He’ll be good by morning.”

Caitlin smiled and nodded, trying to dismiss the nasty, little voice in the back of her brain. She found herself thinking about Barry suffering and feeling pleased. It unnerved her and she thought maybe leaving her inhibitors off was a bad idea. She was fine though. She couldn’t keep depending on those things for the rest of her life anyway. She was perfectly capable of controlling herself for one night. She was an adult for God’s sake.

“That’s good,” said Caitlin although it didn’t sound as convincing as she hoped.

“Caitlin.” Cisco finished another bite of ice cream before speaking again. “It’s not that I’m ungrateful for free ice cream, but I know that’s not the real reason you wanted me to come over. So tell me what’s going on.”

“The rain,” admitted Caitlin after finishing her ice cream. “Whenever there’s a really big storm, it reminds me of that night with the particle accelerator.”

“The night that Ronnie died the first time?” Cisco watched Caitlin nod and hated that she had been through so much pain in her life.

“Usually, I’m okay and it doesn’t really hurt. These days though, I’m … less okay. I guess I just can’t stop thinking about if things were different. Do you ever wonder about Flashpoint?”

“Trust me, the less I think about Flashpoint the better I am,” answered Cisco, finishing his ice cream in an effort to let the cold numb his emotions.

“No, I mean what we were like there,” explained Caitlin. “Like if we never met Barry and got dragged into this craziness.”

“There probably wouldn’t be a STAR Labs if Thawne wasn’t around to make himself look like Wells.” Cisco had never thought about Flashpoint because its aftermath was painful enough to deal with. “If there wasn’t a STAR Labs then that means we probably wouldn’t have been friends.”

“But we’d be normal though.” Caitlin tried to keep herself calm but she found herself angry at all the thoughts of what she could have been besides her current state. “We’d be happy.”

“Maybe yeah but maybe no. I don’t think I would be happy without you being my friend. I don’t want to live in a world where you’re not a part of my life.”

Caitlin felt her self-control slip for only a moment and that was all Killer Frost required. “Even if I was like this for the rest of my life?”

Cisco felt the temperature around them drop as Caitlin’s eyes glowed and a hollow rasp crept into her voice. She held up her hand in front of her and Cisco could see the white wisps of cold billowing from it. He stayed calm though and never let his gaze leave her eyes. To Caitlin’s surprise, he actually leaned in closer and didn’t flinch.

“You don’t scare me, Caitlin,” he told her, his eyes deadlocked with hers. “You never have and you never will.”

“Cisco, don’t,” warned Caitlin as he put his hand up to press against hers. She instinctively shut her powers off so she wouldn’t hurt him, and then she marveled at his warm fingers interlocking with hers.

“What happened to you was something you had no control over,” said Cisco. “You have powers and there’s nothing that can change that. You do have a choice though. You never have to be her.”

“I think you give me too much credit, Cisco.”

“I think you give yourself too little, Caitlin.”

Caitlin smiled and squeezed his hand with hers. “Thanks for coming over. I promise not to have another meltdown for a while.”

“Hey, it happens.” Cisco looked up at the ceiling as the power finally came back on. “And Central Utilities said let there be light.”

Caitlin let go of Cisco’s hand and gathered up the ice cream and the bowls. She put the ice cream back in the freezer and then opened the drawer to take out her inhibitors. “Hey, Cisco, what do these things run on anyway?”

“Something that’s going to last a really long time,” he answered as he came over to her. “Once I realized you were going to wear them all the time, I upgraded the power source. I’ve always got you, Caitlin.”

“Always got you too.” Caitlin put the inhibitors back on and felt the cold leave her body. “For the record, I wouldn’t want to live in a world where we weren’t friends either.”

“But then you could have all the ice cream to yourself,” reminded Cisco with a grin. “Good night, Caitlin. Be safe, okay?”

“You too, Cisco.”

Cisco left the apartment and Caitlin watched him go. She was glad that she had friends like Cisco and Barry. It was nice to know that when she found herself lost in the darkness, they would bring her back home into the light.


End file.
